Allegheny County PA

An Account of the Sufferings of Mercy Harbison – Indian Captivities

On the 4th of November, 1791, a force of Americans under General Arthur St. Clair was attacked, near the present Ohio-Indiana boundary line, by about the same number of Indians led by Blue Jacket, Little Turtle, and the white renegade Simon Girty. Their defeat was the most disastrous that ever has been suffered by our arms when engaged against a savage foe on anything like even terms. Out of 86 officers and about 1400 regular and militia soldiers, St. Clair lost 70 officers killed or wounded, and 845 men killed, wounded, or missing. The survivors fled in panic, throwing away their weapons and accoutrements. Such was “St. Clair’s defeat.”

The utter incompetency of the officers commanding this expedition may be judged from the single fact that a great number of women were allowed to accompany the troops into a wilderness known to be infested with the worst kind of savages. There were about 250 of these women with the “army” on the day of the battle. Of these, 56 were killed on the spot, many being pinned to the earth by stakes driven through their bodies. Few of the others escaped captivity.

After this unprecedented victory, the Indians became more troublesome than ever along the frontier. No settler’s home was safe, and many were destroyed in the year of terror that followed. The awful fate of one of those households is told in the following touching narrative of Mercy Harbison, wife of one of the survivors of St. Clair’s defeat. How two of her little children were slaughtered before her eyes, how she was dragged through the wilderness with a babe at her breast, how cruelly maltreated, and how she finally escaped, barefooted and carrying her infant through days and nights of almost superhuman exertion, she has left record in a deposition before the magistrates at Pittsburgh and in the statement here reprinted.

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Biography of A. W. Patterson, M.D.

A.W. PATTERSON, M.D. – Doctor Patterson was born in Armstrong county, Pennsylvania, October 14, 1814. He received his scholastic education in the village of Freeport, of his native state, and afterwards entered the Western University, at Pittsburgh. He subsequently studied medicine in the office of Doctor J.P. Gazzam, an old and prominent physician of that

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Biographical Sketch of Claude Wilber Shimmon

Shimmon, Claude Wilber; real estate; born, Allegheny, Pa., Dec. 31, 1878; son of John C. and Elizabeth McLaughlin Shimmon; educated, public grade and High School, Cleveland; A. B., Western Reserve University, 1901; Cleveland Law School, 1904; married, Bedford, O., Sept. 22, 1905, Florence A. Prestage; issue, two daughters; 1 and 4 years old; Republican; member

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Early Exploration and Native Americans

De Soto and his band gave to the Choctaws at Moma Binah and the Chickasaws at Chikasahha their first lesson in the white man’s modus operandi to civilize and Christianize North American Indians; so has the same lesson been continued to be given to that unfortunate people by his white successors from that day to this,

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Biographical Sketch of James Rudolph Garfield

Garfield, James Rudolph; ex-Secretary of the Interior; born, Hiram, O., Oct. 17, 1865; son of James Abram (20th President of the U. S.) and Lucretia Rudolph Garfield (q. v.); brother of Harry Augustus G. (q. v.) ; A. B., Williams College, 1885; studied Columbia Law School.; (LL. D., University of Pittsburg, 1909) ; married, Helen

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Biographical Sketch of James Mathews

Mathews, James; lawyer; born, Bellwood, Pa., Sept. 4, 1868; educated at Mifflintown; graduated, Princeton University, 1890, degree A. B., Cincinnati Law School, 1893, degree LL. B.; admitted to the bar, and began practice in the United States attorney’s office, in Pittsburgh, Pa., 1893; come to Cleveland in 1894, as attorney for Cleveland, Akron & Columbus

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